In the UK we have had remote ATC running for the last four years.

You can read about it here: https://www.caa.co.uk/media/0c...

Pack in the 1980's and 1990's fourth generation languages (4GLs) were going to allow people to produce spiffing applications without the need for anyone who could actually code. The languages of the day, Algol, Cobol, and FORTRAN would be consigned the dustbin of history.

Access, Visual Basic, and Frameworks all made similar promises and now we have AI manifesting itself as the latest iteration of the Emperor's clothing.

Goats eat the plants right down to the roots and kill it - they are one of the reasons for deserts expanding in north Africa.

They will also wander about on top of the panels, eat through cables, and generally mess things about.

The ramifications of that decision have been mind boggling, even the people of Iran are suffering as the moderates were completely discredited by the religious hard liners with the knock on effect on human rights. Externally they have supported anyone and everyone that might be a thorn in the side of the USA be that in Gaze, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, and sooner or later they will back a terrorist even on mainland USA. The cost to the Europe and the USA of that decision could be in the 100s of Bns.

In the catalogue of dumb things that Donald has done, that's pretty much at the top of the list.

The BBC & SKY news channels have become magazine shows and increasingly are simply re-broadcasting output from other sources. e.g. 10 Sept BBC, SKY, and GBNews were all simply rebroadcasting the BBC Parliament channel and pasting social media comments over the top.

I'm afraid that is not news, especially when there is no meaningful attempt to present analysis and summation of what has gone before.

Presenters (they ain't journalists) frequently talk more than their interviewees who in turn are seldom allowed to finish a sentence let alone get their point across. I very rarely watch the 6pm or 10pm news shows and have given up completely on all of the breakfast shows who seem to have picked two or three stories from the overnight social media feeds, collected up a handful of opinionated charlatans with diametrically opposing views, and then try and stir up an incident that will be reported in social media later in the day. Bonus points if it goes viral.

They introduced cats to Diego Garcia decades ago in the belief that they would address the rat problem. When I visited there a couple of decades ago they were in the process of trapping the cats and in parallel were poisoning and trapping the rats.

There was also an issue with the feral chicken population, but I can't remember if that was causing any problems.

Folks getting all excited about satcom EM radiation being detected (or not) by the bad guys overlook the real problem - Google maps location tracking.

Presuming that the offenders were using smartphones to connect to the Starlink enabled WiFi then those handsets would be reporting their GPS location to google just as all those Russians invading Ukraine inadvertently reported that they were stuck in traffic jams of military vehicles to very OSINT analyst on the planet.

After the charges being thrown out by the courts in America and cognisant of the principal of caveat emptor I would not be surprised if the damages awarded were £1.

Over the years I have found that twin and earth copper cables work just fine from installed speakers.

Most recently I went with 2.5mm T&E for a Yamaha Multicast for EV Evid ceiling speakers in my lounge and kitchen, no capacitance worries and plenty of current carrying capacity.

I live just west of Glasgow, Scotland. This is the departure point for much European traffic heading for North America, the weather here was dramatically different post 9/11 and to a lesser extend during the first lock down. Basically it was warmer, dryer, and much more settled.

I can't comment on air quality, but with the roads and towns empty of vehicles it must have been better.

When the plants you are growing are easily recognised as being illegal to grow then having everything indoors is kinda essential if you want to avoid attracting the attention of the local police. The electricity is FoC and the real estate tends to be of questionable provenance as well.

for comparison in the UK our diesel golf averages 60mpg with fuel at £6/gallon, rapid chargers at service stations charging 74p/kwh if you can get onto one.

My employer (TLA with an X) dishes out decent laptops with a decent no quibbles budget for extra screens, docking stations, keyboards etc. They are really serious about supporting WFH and somehow it just works. Desks, chairs, first aid kits - anything you might need.

Lots and lots of people using SfB in places where Internet connections are not available or not permitted. There are some very, very serious conversations being had amongst three letter agencies about what will replace it.

No different from checking the records of the donut shop to see who called in the previous weeks threatening to rob the shop and then checking out those numbers.